Symantec System Recovery Desktop Edition

So I have a failed PC and a spare PC, best way to move from one to another is Symantec System Recovery Desktop Edition as the hardware is different and simply moving the drive from one to the other won't work.

I buy Symantec System Recovery Desktop Edition 2013 from Symantec online but then have to wait 2-3 days before I get my licence key so can't do anything.

Finally the key arrives and I can get cracking.

Or perhaps not the 2013 version won't work on my system as I get the error message "Error 0x0000005D: Your PC needs to restart. Please hold down the power button" 

After chatting to support it appears my machine is not PAE capable so won't work with the 2013 edition as per tech note http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH203411

So I request and get a download of the 2011 edition which boots fine and I can now do a cold backup using the boot iso.

I then attempt to restore the backup on my spare pc which I know supports Windows 7 as it has run it in the past.

All goes well until it reboots and windows starts configuring itself when I get the following message.

"Windows could not parse or process the unattend answer file for pass [specialize]. The settings specified in the answer file can not be applied. The error was detected while processing settings for the component [Microsoft-Windows-Shell-Script]"

When I click OK the PC then reboots and when it restarts windows I get another message.

"The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered a problem or an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install windows click "OK" to restart the computer and restart the installation".

 
There is a method to get round this message which I tried but I did not end up with a useable system afterwards. Even after much googling I ended up with a pc which appeared to work but had issues with DNS resolution, entries appeared in the dns cache correctly but for some reason the program requesting the lookup did not get the address meaning I could ping an ip address but not a name such as www.google.co.uk.

Next day after some sleep I decided to do a restore but to prevent Symantec System Recovery creating an answer file, this can be done as follows:-

During the restore wizard process, hold down the 'Ctrl' key when clicking the 'Use Rrestore Anywhere' option. Disable 'Run Windows Mini Setup' and put a check in 'Delete existing drivers'. 

The restore then worked without error and windows booted correctly except although windows correctly saw my network card I had no network access.

Having learnt from my earlier restore when I had the same issue I removed and reinstalled my firewall software (AVG it turns out but this will probably apply to most virus software) and hey presto my network appeared.

Symantec support were helpful but in the end I worked it out myself.

Hope this helps some other poor unfortunate sole if they have the same issue.